Fritz Steiner (actor, 1913)

Friedrich Arthur "Fritz" Steiner (born December 25, 1913 in Eibenstock , † October 31, 1977 in Wrocław ) was a German actor , operetta buffo , theater director and artistic director .

Childhood and youth

1913 to 1933

He was born in Eibenstock as the child of a married couple who ran a travel theater - their mother Agnes from the Rhineland and their father Fritz Steiner from Vienna - where the family living in Dresden stayed with a commitment at the time. First growing up in Dresden in the Oppellvorstadt , his father re -founded his travel theater in Dresden-Strehlen in 1920 after the First World War . At that time, his engagement was in the “ Königshof ”, a ballroom that has since been reconstructed (after 1990, as of 2017). In the same year, the seven-year-old appeared on the stage next to his four-year-old sister Therese for the first time.

In 1921 the father tried to found a people's theater in Dresden's “Volkswohl”, which, however, fell victim to the ensuing inflation a little later. From 1923 to 1928 the traveling stage had to move to Mittweida . There Fritz Steiner played the age of ten his first operetta role of "Heinerle" in The Jolly Farmer of Leo Fall . In addition to the stage in Mittweida, father Steiner's traveling stage also played stages in Kamenz (city theater), Bad Schandau (spa theater) and in Lauban (summer theater); Fritz played the children's roles everywhere. Despite this travel activity, he graduated from the Realgymnasium during this time.

Poverty and existential fear as constant family companions, the constant begging for the annual new concessions (with their deposits that are hardly required for a family business ) and the contempt of the "well-to-do" bourgeoisie towards all traveling stages (which also included their ensembles and families) and against their exclusively proletarian or unemployed audience - which was often enough reflected in reviews - Steiner's youth shaped and made an anger against these cultural and social conditions ripen in him.

His artistic natural talent prevailed: after a private vocal training in Dresden, which the family literally saved from the mouth, the 17-year-old got his first engagement as tenor buffo in the Oberschlesisches Landestheater Beuthen-Kattowitz in 1930/31 . At the same time, the father took over the Sorau City Theater and then hired his son as buffo and office manager: Fritz Steiner learned the business from scratch as a theater director.

1933 to 1945

Although the Steiners were Catholics, their Jewish descent was their undoing: In June 1933, a guest performance by the Sorauer Landestheater in Mittweida was openly attacked by the SA. The family then fled to Czechoslovakia . When his father leased a theater there, the Henlein supporters of the Sudeten German home front attacked him , vilified him and finally ensured that what they called the Jewish émigré smear, which they called this, was soon closed . The father died in the same year in grief and utterly impoverished, whereupon the family separated and went their own way. His sister Therese - z. B. - married a Bulgarian, from whom she separated again a little later, and escaped investigations by the authorities under his name (“Therese Angeloff”) as well as “Therese Steiner”.

Fritz Steiner himself took on the Czechoslovak citizenship, played in Upper Silesian theaters, but also in the then second largest theater in Czechoslovakia, the "Erzgebirge Theater" in Teplitz , joined the KPČ and served two years in the Czechoslovak army. During this time he married Eva Belgart, a Jewish ballet master, for whom he converted to the Jewish faith .

From May to October 1938 he was engaged as an operetta singer at the newly founded Prague 2 transmitter in Melnik , where he was immediately dismissed as a non-Aryan after the Munich Agreement came into force . This was followed by his drafting into the German armed forces , from which he was released after a few months because he was unworthy of military service. In 1940 his wife died.

In this threatening situation, he met his future second wife, the actress Kinga von Felbinger, who was refused marriage by the authorities. Due to a lack of staff, Steiner was conscripted to the Stadttheater Freiberg in 1941/42 . There he was active in the communist resistance by his own admission.

Released in Freiberg in February 1942 because of political unreliability , the couple found accommodation with Steiner's mother Agnes, who lived in Dresden again. They were secretly married in the Catholic Court Church in Dresden. Subsequently, in February 1943 summons by the Gestapo followed , Fritz Steiner was classified as a “full Jew”, his wife Kinga was accused of racial disgrace .

Immediately afterwards the married couple managed to flee to Switzerland, which, however, left their daughter in Dresden with Steiner's mother Agnes. After a desolate time in an internment camp, Steiner got an engagement at the Chur City Theater , where, under the leadership of the director Senges-Faust at the time, arbitrariness prevailed and up to 43 premieres per season were torn out of the ensemble under sometimes poor conditions.

1945 to 1958

Steiner's sister Therese Angeloff organized two theaters for the family in Johannstadt and Cotta (the latter became the Young Generation Theater from 1950 until 2016 ) and brought her brother and his wife back from Switzerland, both of them in December 1945 arrived in Dresden. Fritz Steiner immediately joined the KPD and until 1947 headed the two theaters as the “United People's Theater Dresden” (VVD). After he was booted out by their management by the cultural politicians Otto Bochmann and Egon Rentzsch, he went to the western occupation zones and played a. a. 1947/48 at the "New Theater Munich", where he met his future third wife, Hildegard "Gardy" Harzfeld.

In 1949 the new director of the "Deutsche Volksbühne Dresden" (DVD, which had emerged from the VVD), Hans Pitra , brought him back. In addition to many productions, Steiner also received a teaching post for operetta training at the Dresden University of Music in 1950 . His wife was engaged as an actress on the DVD and after its dissolution was taken over by the Dresden State Theater . During this time they separated from Steiner.

However, in 1951 Pitra became the artistic director of the Berlin Metropol-Theater and Otto Bochmann, the aforementioned cultural functionary, took over the artistic director of the Dresden operetta theater . Due to the deteriorating relationships, Steiner went to the Volksbühnen-Theater in Potsdam as head director for opera and operetta in 1951 and was very successful in staging.

"With the required ideological justifications for the suitability of works of music theater for socialist people, he brings it to perfection"

- Andreas Schwarze : Metropolis of pleasure.

Hildegard Harzfeld also became his third wife here.

In 1957 the then director Ilse Rodenberg took over the directorship of the Theater der Freunds in Berlin, successor was Gerhard Meyer , who wanted to make the now "Hans Otto Theater" much stronger as a theater. In this situation, Steiner received the news that Peter Bejach had been removed from his position as director of the Dresden Operetta Theater, and on October 18, 1958, he took up his post as director in Dresden.

1958 to 1977: Principal and “theater professor” - Steiner's directorship at the Dresden State Operetta

From 1958 until his death in the autumn of 1977, Steiner, who was appointed professor on March 27, 1967, was director of the Dresden State Operetta .

In 1958, while still under the administration of the state theaters, his goal was to create a “socialist folk theater” with the operetta house, which he largely succeeded in doing. Ruling as an autocrat and improviser, leading the theater like a family business (as an old school principal ), he realized ambitious musical theater with a dilapidated house and insufficient financial means. As boss he was adamant, but also present and always thrilling on stage. He often treated artists and staff like children, and discussions about artistic issues were next to impossible. His family also received lucrative commissions: his wife Gardy regularly appeared on stage as a diva, his sister Therese Angeloff received lucrative commissions as a librettist , son-in-law Horst Ludwig and other family members received engagements.

Under him, the “red operetta” behaved emphatically in conformity with the SED, friendship agreements with various companies and a non-commissioned school as well as the performance of many contemporary socialist pieces gave Steiner the reputation and the connections he needed for foreign currency and rights for the performance of internationally successful musicals to obtain. In 1967 he achieved that the Dresden State Operetta, so named in 1963, was released into the artistic independence that it still has today (2017).

Nonetheless, he managed to create a very special, sparkling theater atmosphere in the dilapidated house in Leuben , and employees and guests of the house became a sworn community full of creativity and energy. The audience adored his stars.

This is also how his first two productions are to be understood: Frau Luna (1959, his first directorial work in Leuben) in the version by Otto Schneidereit (“Luna has finally got a logical fable”, quote from Steiner) and The beautiful Helena in the version by Karl-Heinz Gutheim and Werner Finck (1960), in which he “de-goded” a world that is governed with little wisdom with ingenious topicality.

Steiner's principle was to always bring five premieres to the stage per season, with three performances coming from the present and two from the “classical repertoire”. By contemporary art, Steiner understood, on the one hand, to bring sophisticated pieces of GDR contemporary art to the stage (first piece was Alarm in Pont l'Eveque by Conny Odd in 1960, followed by, among others, Messeschlager Gisela by Gerd Natschinski 1961 or Rund ist die Welt by Wolfram Heicking ( Text by Klaus Eidam ) 1962), as well as contemporary operettas from Czechoslovakia or the Soviet Union (the first piece was the German premiere of Sturmische Hochzeit by Boris A. Alexandrowitsch in 1960).

Later he turned to the musical : Sensations were the GDR premieres of My Fair Lady (1965) with Marita Böhme and Peter Herden , both as guests in the main roles (that in 1978, significantly after Steiner's death, after 446 performances on the instructions of the SED leadership in Berlin had to be canceled), Sweet Charity (1971), Show Boat (1973) and Cabaret (1976, in which he played the greengrocer Schulz).

The classic operettas such as Der Bettelstudent (1959), Ritter Blaubart (1964, he played the beastly King Bobèche), The Cousin from Dingsda (1975) and Orpheus in the Underworld (1977) were played in new and surprising productions. His production of Carl Binder's Tannhäuser and the brawl on the Wartburg (“Great Moral-Germanic Operetta by Johann Nestroy ”) from 1976 became a special milestone .

With the decision of the SED leadership to create a large new building area in Leuben, it was possible from 1970 to obtain at least the approval for some renovations, which, however, had to be carried out by the ensemble "in-house". Reconstruction measures were carried out up to 1977, a backdrop elevator was installed, an extension with a ballet and rehearsal hall was created and new lighting technology was procured: Too little for a modern theater and a new building was again not worth any further discussion - but no further discussions were to take place until after 1990 Investments in the house in Leuben follow.

Fritz Steiner did not experience the opening as "Kulturzentrum Dresden-Ost", as it was initially named in official papers for a few years (however, it remained a purely internal designation) on the 30th anniversary of the Dresden State Operetta in November 1977: During On an international tour of the State Operetta in southern Poland, Fritz Steiner fell seriously ill and died on the night of October 30th to 31st, 1977 in a hospital in Wroclaw.

Succession

Reinhold Stövesand was his successor as director of the Dresden State Operetta .

His granddaughter Peggy Steiner followed in his footsteps and became an operetta singer.

literature

• Andreas Schwarze: Metropolis of pleasure - musical folk theater in Dresden from 1844 until today . Dresden: SAXO'Phon 2016. ISBN 978-3-943444-59-9 . P. 123–129 ( Fritz Steiner - From comedian child to “theater professor” ).

Web links

• “The cheerful muse as a village beauty” in the Leubener Zeitung

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Schwarze, p. 127.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Schwarze, p. 144.
3. ↑ Performance dates from Peter Gunold (ed.): 50 years of the Dresden State Operetta - 225 years of the musical Volkstheater in Dresden. Verlag und Galerie Buchkunst Läzer, Weimar, 1997. pp. 236–249. Without ISBN.
4. ↑ Both the awards on the theater program. Gunold, p. 245.
5. ↑ Peggy Steiner on musik-in-dresden.de